Atropates's satrapy became a Turkic Caspian republic
The Republic of Azerbaijan sits landlocked between Western Asia and Eastern Europe on the Caspian, bordering Russia, Georgia, Turkey's exclave link, Armenia, and Iran. Russo-Persian wars of 1804–1813 and 1826–1828 peeled it from Qajar Iran. In 1918 it became the first secular democratic Muslim-majority republic.
The satrap's name is thought to mean "protected by the holy fire," a clue to the Zoroastrian faith that once dominated the region, and the Avesta honours the guardian spirit of holy Atropatene. Across the centuries it shifted through Middle Persian Āturpātākān and New Persian Āzarbāydjān. Until 1918 the label belonged to what is now northwestern Iran; the lands of the new republic had been called Arran and Shirvan, and Iran objected when the Musavat government took the name.
The oldest traces of people come from Azykh Cave and its Stone Age Guruchay culture. Scythians arrived in the 9th century BC, followed by the Medes, whose empire was folded into the Achaemenid realm around 550 BC. Caucasian Albania became a Sasanian vassal in 252, and its king Urnayr adopted Christianity in the 4th century. Arab armies crushed the resistance of King Juansher in 667, and from the 11th century migrating Oghuz Turks gradually replaced the Iranian tongue Old Azeri with the ancestor of modern Azerbaijani. Under the Seljuks, poets such as Nizami Ganjavi made the region a centre of Persian literature.
The Shirvanshahs governed with wide autonomy from 861 until Safavid Iran absorbed them, finally deposing them in 1538 and converting the mostly Sunni population to Shia Islam. After Nader Shah died in 1747, semi-independent khanates sprang up under nominal Iranian overlordship. Russia's sack of Ganja in 1804 opened the wars that ended with the Gulistan and Turkmenchay treaties, which fixed the border on the Aras River.
The first republic lasted until the Soviet conquest of 1920, and modern independence came on 30 August 1991. Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away that September; war in 2020 returned much of the area, and a 2023 offensive ended the enclave and drove out its Armenian population. The New Azerbaijan Party has ruled since 1993 under Heydar Aliyev and then his son Ilham, facing accusations of authoritarianism and media repression.
Source: Azerbaijan
